Great Debates in Astronomy (HET616)

"The physical laws and constants of our Universe are special" Debate (Against)

That the laws and constants of our Universe are special is a common
piece of dogma. The aﬃrmative team will contend that the position is not
dogma, but is instead supported by weighty evidence and learned
thinking. That position, we on the negative side know, is fundamentally
ﬂawed and easily disassembled. In order to get at the core of the
argument we will address the three keys areas of the statement:

Formation of the Moon

The question of how the Moon came to be has probably been pondered since
prehistoric times. The origin of Earth, Moon, and the heavens is the
subject of many creation myths. Egyptian mythology endows the Moon, as
the deity Thoth, with the role of arbiter between the gods. Thoth came
to be associated with wisdom and, appropriately, astronomy. Greek
mythology associates the Titanian goddess Selene with the Moon and the
ancient Roman culture associated Selene with the god Luna from their
pantheon. Both cultures leave us with modern astronomical terms used in
conjunction with the Moon, such as lunar or selenology (study of the
origin of the Moon). While the ancients did come to grips with the
nature of the Moon’s motions, the existence of the Moon was largely
taken as a divine creation. Such thinking persists today in religious
circles.

Until the European Renaissance the origin of the heavens remained a
divine topic. With the emergence of new tools, thinking, and processes,
explanation of the Earth and Moon’s origin became a more scientiﬁc
pursuit. The subsequent explosion of science lead to a series of lunar
origin hypotheses that are the topic of the following discussion.Formation of the Moon Project
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